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Sean Hannity really is a nasty piece of work. He spent his entire show this Wednesday evening giving Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman an extremely leading interview where he walked him through a lot of the answers and at times talked more than Zimmerman did.

This interview comes in the wake of recent questions about whether Hannity is paying for Zimmerman's defense, which of course Hannity denied.

As Think Progress reported, here's how Zimmerman responded when asked if he had any regrets: George Zimmerman Says He Wouldn’t Do Anything Differently: ‘It Was God’s Plan’ For Me To Kill Trayvon Martin:

Tonight, George Zimmerman — who is currently facing second degree murder charges for killing Trayvon Martin — participated in a highly unusual interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity.

Hannity asked Zimmerman if he regretted getting out of his car to follow Trayvon, carrying a gun, or anything at all about the night he killed Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he regretted nothing because he believed “it was all God’s plan.” He also said there isn’t anything he would do differently in retrospect. [...]

Update: At the very end of the interview, Zimmerman goes back and to the question and says “I do wish there was something, anything I could have done that would have put me in the position where I didn’t have to take his life. And I do want to tell everyone…that I’m sorry that this happened.”

As they noted, Martin's father responded to Zimmerman's statement tonight as well. Lawrence O'Donnell and his panel members Joy Reid and Jonathan Capehart weighed in on the interview on MSNBC and Reid addressed something I was wondering as well, which is why Zimmerman's attorney would subject him to the extra scrutiny this interview is going to bring him ahead of his trial. Reid explained it was made clear that his attorney Mark O'Mara was willing to have him appear on Fox to get his fundraising going again.

You can watch that interview below the fold.

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I wish I could say I'm shocked by this, but I'm not. From Current's The Young Turks: Did Fox News host Sean Hannity offer to pay for George Zimmerman’s defense? :

Cenk talks to GlobalGrind.com editor-in-chief Michael Skolnik, who discovered that in George Zimmerman’s jailhouse tapes he references someone he calls “S.H.” who might help pay for his defense. Could it be Sean Hannity, who has had off-the-record conversations with Zimmerman before? Fox News denied that Hannity has contributed financially, but Skolnik says a “rock solid source” confirms at least some of the story.

Here's more from GlobalGrind.com: SHOCKING REVELATION! Fox News Host Sean Hannity Offered To Pay George Zimmerman's Legal Fees!:

Yesterday, the Special Prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case released 149 jail house phone calls that Mr. Zimmerman made while being held on bail in April of this year in Seminole County Jail. Last night, GlobalGrind scoured through all of them, trying to decipher the coded language that George uses in his conversations with his family and close friends.

In call #30, from April 14th (3 days after being arrested), George is speaking to one his closest friends and confidantes, "Scott." As reported by many of our colleagues in the press, including the Miami Herald this morning, George mentions to Scott that his attorney Mark O'Mara is aware of an attempted transfer of $37,000 from his PayPal account to Zimmerman's wife's personal account. This would be big enough news in the case, as Mr. Zimmerman was sent back to jail after being released on his first bond for not disclosing the amount of money he had raised for his legal defense fund. Furthermore, Mr. O'Mara admitted in court that he did not know anything about the attempted transfers, but with this new evidence being made public, it seems that the attorney was in the know.

However, as we listened to the rest of the call, what struck us as odd was George's comments about a gentleman, who he calls "SH," who offered to pay for his entire legal defense, as long as he uses an attorney, who George calls "JB." In a previous call (#24), George reveals to his wife, Shellie, that "JB" is Jose Baez, who represented Casey Anthony (this was also confirmed to GlobalGrind by Miami Herald reporter, Frances Robles). However, the person who offered to pay for his legal fees, "SH" is only identified in code.

More there with transcripts of the phone recordings and from the end of the article:

George Zimmerman decided not to use Jose Baez as his attorney and stuck with Mark O'Mara. We do not know if Sean Hannity is funding Mr. Zimmerman's legal defense with Mr. O'Mara at the helm. We reached out to Mr. Hannity for comment and are awaiting a response.

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A Texas man says he was justified in killing an elementary school teacher over a noise complaint because he was "standing my ground."

Retired firefighter Raul Rodriguez is hoping that a video that he taped himself will prove that he was acting in self-defense when he gunned down P.E. teacher Kelly Danaher outside the victim's home near Houston in May 2010.

On the video that was presented as evidence in court on Wednesday, loud music can be heard as Rodriguez tells Danaher to "turn it down."

"You need to stop right there," Rodriguez says. "Don't come any closer please. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, stop, I said stop right now or I will shoot you! ... I fear for my life. I told you to stop, my life's in danger, you got weapons on you, stay away from me."

While standing in Danaher's driveway with a flashlight and a gun, Rodriguez is also on the phone with a 911 dispatcher using the buzzwords he learned in concealed weapons class, according to the prosecutor.

At one point, one the men Rodriguez confronted suggests that he will get his own gun: "When I go in that house and come back, don’t think I won’t be equal to you, baby."

"I'm talking to you, and I mean, I'm scared to death here," Rodriguez explains to the dispatcher. "It's about to get out of hand, sir. Please help me, now. I'm standing my ground here."

Moments later, the video ends after a crack of gunfire.

"This is a difficult defense to mount," legal analyst Dana Cole told ABC News. "He had no injury, he brought a gun to a noise complaint, and it appeared he was escalating it by baiting the party-goers."

KHOU legal expert Gerald Treece also questioned the suspect's motive.

"Nobody’s hold your own ground, or stand your own ground laws are ever on the side of the person who started the fight," Treece said.

Texas' "Castle Doctrine" is similar to Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law because it says that gun owners no longer have a "duty to retreat."

In the wake of the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin earlier this year, state Rep. Garnet Coleman (D) warned that the same type of situation was possible in Texas.

"It can happen here," Coleman pointed out. "The law is the same - the law that protects the guy that shot Trayvon."

Rodriguez is expected to testify in a trial that will continue through the end of the week.

Geraldo Rivera has been sticking to his talking points that if Trayvon Martin had not been wearing a hoodie, he may not have been shot and killed by George Zimmerman and that "dressing like a wannabe gangster" contributed to his death. On his show this Sunday evening, Rivera was called out for his blame the victim game by Martin's attorney, who chastised Rivera for embarrassing his son again with the hoodie remarks and likened his justification of the Martin shooting to those who would justify rape by blaming the victim for what clothing they were wearing.

As our friends at News Hounds reported, this past Friday, Geraldo went on Bill O'Reilly's show and said this: Geraldo Rivera: It’s Reasonable For George Zimmerman To Have Racially Profiled Trayvon Martin Because Of His Size, Race And Hoodie “Thugwear”.

Here's more from their post on Geraldo being called out by Martin's attorney, Benjamin Crump: Trayvon Martin Attorney Tells Geraldo Rivera: You’re Embarrassing Your Son Again With Your Latest Hoodie Comments:

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A person selling gun range targets modeled after slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin says that their "main motivation was to make money off the controversy."

WKMG's Mike DeForest reported on Friday that the unidentified seller told him that the targets "sold out in 2 days."

"The response is overwhelming," the seller said.

While the item appears to have been removed from GunBroker.com, a cached version of the page was still available at the time of publication.

Photos of the item, which was titled "10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets," showed crosshairs over a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February. The figure has a bag of Skittle in his pocket and is holding what appears to be a can of iced tea, similar to what Martin had purchased before being gunned down. The pack of 10 targets was being sold for $8.

"Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin," a description on the targets reads. "Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12"x18" ( The same as Darkotic Zombie Targets) This is a Ten Pack of Targets."

The seller's ID was listed as "hillerarmco" from Virginia Beach, Virginia. A website by the same name is registered to Hiller Armament Company in Virginia Beach, but the associated phone number had been disconnected.

Zimmerman attorney Mark O'Mara told WKMG that this type of "hatred" just makes his client's defense even more problematic.

"This is the highest level of disgust and the lowest level of civility," O'Mara said. "It's this type of hatred -- that's what this is, it's hate-mongering -- that's going to make it more difficult to try this case."

"I hope there is a crime that we can charge that person who made that with," he added. "I'm not sure what it is, but we need to come up with one because that's disgusting."

(h/t: Gawker)

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On this Friday's Real Time, Bill Maher highlighted another segment with his "Real Time reporter" Alexandra Pelosi, this time focusing on the media and their hyping of a potential race war in Sanford, Florida, because all of about the three members or so of the New Black Panther Party and a handful or so of Neo-Nazis decided to show up in town.

It was nice to see someone point out just how overblown the coverage on either has been, but it's too bad Maher did not also point out the fact that Fox has been flogging the New Black Panthers as though they're a group to take seriously and fearmongering over them for a lot longer than just this story. They've been hyping this tiny group for a lot longer than just their coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. I would hope he continues to go after them for their overblown coverage of that small fringe group and points that out in the future to his audience as well.

I'll settle for the him pointing out how horrid it is that the media looked like they were praying for a race war when it's fairly obvious there was not going to be one, so they'd have some ambulances to chase for now since sadly, he's one of the few I've seen doing it since this case finally got some national media attention.

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Ann Coulter says that gun control laws are inherently racist and that the solution to incidents like the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is more "negroes with guns."

On Tuesday, Coulter used Martin's shooting to argue against gun control laws and said that every African American should arm themselves against the "Democratic Ku Klux Klan."

"We don't know the facts yet, but let's assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black," Coulter wrote in a column titled "Negroes with Guns."

"If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America's oldest and most august civil rights organization."

Coulter later told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that "gun control laws have been used historically to keep guns out of the hands of blacks."

"It was the Republican Party and the NRA that has always supported arming blacks in order to protect themselves from the Democratic Ku Klux Klan," she explained.

O'Reilly summed up Coulter's argument: "So what you're saying is if MSNBC's and NBC News' hypothesis is true that this was a racially-biased driven murder, that all African Americans should take that as a warning sign and arm themselves against that happening to them. Therefore, they should support the NRA, they should support he the law that allows you to fight back if threatened and they should arm themselves."

"Yes," Coulter agreed. "And the reason I thought of it is because liberals are leaping to exactly the opposite conclusion that, 'Oh, we have to get rid of these Stand Your Ground laws.' They're against easy issuing of concealed carry permits. As well as I point out in my column, Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian minister under constant death threats, applied for a gun permit after his house was fire bombed and the Alabama authorities, under the discretionary gun permit law, said, 'No. No, this Christian minister is not suitable for a gun permit.' That's how discretionary permits work."

"The history books will often try and twist the history by referring to the KKK and the racist as Southerners. Oh, no, no, no. The Republicans in the South weren't discriminatory. ... The one thing all of the discriminators and the KKK sympathizers -- or KKK themselves -- had in common was they were all Democrats."

"I think you've go a very good point here," O'Reilly observed. "Is the left really that concerned about Trayvon Martin or are they concerned, once again, ramming their agenda no matter what it is under the throats of the American people under the guise of being sympathetic towards this poor teenager and his family?"

Earlier this month, Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree pointed out that measures like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law were racist in practice.

"Just think about changing the race," Ogletree said. “I want to see the first black man who uses the ‘Stand Your Ground’ defense and see if it works. I want to see the first white victim of the 'Stand Your Ground' by a black defendant and see if it works.”

(h/t: Mediaite)

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A Miami-Dade fire captain is under investigation after he asserted that the death of an unarmed Florida teen was the fault of "failed, sh*tbag, ignorant, pathetic, welfare dependent excuses for parents."

According to the Grio, Miami-Dade fire captain Brian Beckmann made the following entry on his Facebook page last week on the same day that State Attorney Angela Corey announced she was charging neighborhood watchmen George Zimmerman with the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin:

"Listening to Prosecutor Corey blow herself and her staff for five minutes before pre-passing judgment on George Zimmerman. The state seeks reelection again, truth aside. I and my coworkers could rewrite the book on whether our urban youths are victims of racist profiling or products of their failed, shitbag, ignorant, pathetic, welfare dependent excuses for parents, but like Mrs. Corey, we speak only the truth. They're just misunderstood little church going angels and the ghetto hoodie look doesn't have anything to do with why people wonder if they're about to get jacked by a thug."

Beckmann later deleted the post and defended himself, writing, "I am a private citizen and have the same right to freely express an opinion on any subject that anyone else does. I choose not to embellish or alter the facts as your employer chose to do."

"Wrong, cap'n," South Florida journalist Bob Norman wrote for WPLG. "You're in a high-ranking position in taxpayer-financed fire department that serves all people in life and death situations, including those people in the inner city that you apparently despise. He's proven himself unfit for public service."

"The definition of racism begins: 'The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race ...'. Key word: all," Norman added. "There's no denying that there are deep problems in the black community that shouldn't be ignored. But the real ignorance is to lump everyone together into one narrowly defined and incredibly negative and hateful ball. It's not just stupid to do that, it's dangerously stupid."

A spokesman for the Miami-Dade Fire Department released a statement that promised the comments would be investigated.

"Captain Brian Beckmann has been with Miami-Dade county since 1997," the statement confirmed. "The post on his personal Facebook page is being investigated by Miami-Dade fire rescue. The department's only official Facebook page is: www.facebook.com/MiamiDadeFireRescue."

Martin's mother, Sabrina Fulton, is employed as a program coordinator at the Miami-Dade Housing Authority. His father, Tracey Martin, works as a truck driver. Neither of the parents is "dependant" on welfare.

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey gave a press conference this afternoon explaining the decision to charge Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman with 2nd degree murder. I'm relieved for the family of Martin that we finally got this first step in the process after the governor and prosecutor decided to take another look at the case. Let's hope it's also a first step toward seeing these so-called "stand your ground" laws repealed so another family doesn't have to experience anything like this again.

More of Corey's presser below the fold. Here's more from TPM on the charges and new developments in the case.

Prosecutor Charges George Zimmerman With 2nd-Degree Murder In Trayvon Martin Killing:

A special prosecutor in Florida on Wednesday charged George Zimmerman with second-degree murder for the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in a case that has stoked racial tensions and drawn calls for justice from seemingly every corner of the nation.

At a news conference in Florida, prosecutor Angela Corey said Zimmerman was in custody, though she declined to say where. She said the decisions to charge Zimmerman and which specific charge to bring were not easy.

“It is the search for justice for Trayvon that brought us here to this moment,” Corey said. “I can tell you that we did not come to this decision lightly.”

After the announcement was made, Martin’s parents gave an emotional news conference, saying they were thankful for the arrest. Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, and mother, Sabrina Fulton, said they were grateful to see justice starting to move forward.

“We wanted nothing more, nothing less,” Fulton said. “We just wanted an arrest and we got it. And I say thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.” [...]

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The Trayvon Martin shooting just took a bizarre twist today. From TPM -- George Zimmerman Is Apparently Talking To Sean Hannity But Not His Own Attorneys:

George Zimmerman has gone rogue.

The man accused of killing unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has been dodging his defense team, trying to talk directly to the people debating whether to prosecute him and apparently having off-the-record conversations with conservative talk jock Sean Hannity.

In an unusual news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Zimmerman’s attorneys said they were withdrawing from his case because of their client’s bizarre behavior in recent days.

“I can’t ethically go forward and say that I’m representing George Zimmerman when I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days and he’s giving interviews, apparently,” said defense attorney Craig Sonner. “I mean, that’s just the rumors I’m getting…There are a lot of things going on that I don’t know about.”

One of the most intriguing claims the attorneys made was that at some point recently, Zimmerman put in a call to Hannity, the Fox News host who aired an exclusive interview with the man’s father last month. Attorney Hal Uhrig sounded particularly unnerved about the lack of information he and his colleague were getting about the call.

“We learned that he had called Sean Hannity of Fox News directly, and not through us,” Uhrig said. “And we believe — I can’t confirm this — we believe that he spoke directly with Sean, off the record.”

Presumably speaking about Hannity, he added: “He’s not even willing to tell us what our client told him.”

Neither Hannity nor a representative of Fox News returned TPM’s requests for comment.

The picture that the attorneys painted of their now former client was of a person out of control. The attorneys said they were not abandoning him completely, but they could no longer speak on his behalf if they were not talking to him directly.

Uhrig said “the final straw” in their decision came Tuesday when they found out that Zimmerman had contacted the special prosecutor who is investigating the case. Zimmerman apparently wanted to talk to the prosecutor without his attorneys. The prosecutor, according to the attorneys, declined to speak to him unless he was represented by counsel.

More of the press conference below the fold.

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